In this thesis, I examine the radical political views and activism of Thomas Beddoes, a late eighteenth century chemist and physician. A multifaceted man, Beddoes corresponded with many of Britains leading industrial and intellectual lights, especially members of the Lunar Society, had a brief career as an Oxford lecturer, devised air delivery apparatus with James Watt, and wrote extensively to distribute useful medical knowledge to the public and argue for medical reform, all the while attracting the ire of the government and scientific community for his outspoken, radical, republican politics. <br><br> I track Beddoes career as a Friend of Liberty, set within the context of the British reform movement, from 1792, when he began involving himself publicly in agitation, to 1797, when the death-knell of the British reform movement sounded and the French Revolution seemed to have utterly failed. In doing so, I seek to determine to what extent Beddoes was a radical, a revolutionary, and a fifth-column threat to the British, whether or not his ideology was in any regard the product of his science, and what the nature of his radicalism and the lineage of his ideas can tell us about the intellectual culture of his era. <br><br> I conclude that Beddoes fiery rhetoric belies an otherwise moderate and pacific approach to political change, based in British Enlightenment ideas rather than emerging science. The republic, rather than a goal to be achieved through violent overthrow, was simply the only logical organization for a society of innately equal citizens, a fact he believed obvious to the enlightened mind. He defended the French Revolution while he could still cast it as a moderate endeavor led by rational men, but, like so many of its early British supporters, grew disillusioned as France descended into mob violence and the tyranny of Robespierre. Following the Priestley Riots of 1791, he harboured deep fears of a sans-culotte-like British mob, which threatened not only the Church and King, but the interests and liberty of those men like Joseph Priestley and James Watt who were generating valuable knowledge and industry around him. <br><br> My analysis supports Roy Porters theory of a unique British Enlightenment, a social fermentation which emphasized Lockean personal liberty, improvement, and private property (which evolved into the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith and David Hume), and which was, critically, defensive of liberties already gained. Beddoes constellation of political, religious, scientific, and economic influences reflect the characteristic Englishness of the enlightenment culture around him, distinct particularly from France, and helps illustrate the links between scientific and political ideas in the late Enlightenment.

This thesis examines the role of philosophic instrument-makers within the eighteenth-century philosophic instrument trade in Britain. The instrument-maker functioned in both the realms of the philosophic elite and the burgeoning eighteenth-century public marketplace. Faced with the task of balancing the contradictory scholarly expectations of natural philosophers and the monetary pressures of the public market, these craftsmen employed sophisticated marketing strategies to reconcile these opposing realms. This project examines the careers of several London instrument-makers and their attempts to gain and maintain solid standing among philosophic circles, while using that standing to their commercial advantage in the instrument trade. By examining the way instrument-makers marketed their products one can glean insight into the role philosophic credibility played in shaping the successful instrument makers career and how the materials of experimental philosophy were promoted to a public increasingly interested in consuming natural philosophy.<p> This enquiry addresses several types of marketing techniques employed by instrument-makers in their efforts to sell their wares. However, patenting strategies receive particularly close attention as they reveal the tension found between the scholarly expectations among the philosophic elite and the commercial priority of the public marketplace.

In this thesis, I examine the radical political views and activism of Thomas Beddoes, a late eighteenth century chemist and physician. A multifaceted man, Beddoes corresponded with many of Britains leading industrial and intellectual lights, especially members of the Lunar Society, had a brief career as an Oxford lecturer, devised air delivery apparatus with James Watt, and wrote extensively to distribute useful medical knowledge to the public and argue for medical reform, all the while attracting the ire of the government and scientific community for his outspoken, radical, republican politics. <br><br> I track Beddoes career as a Friend of Liberty, set within the context of the British reform movement, from 1792, when he began involving himself publicly in agitation, to 1797, when the death-knell of the British reform movement sounded and the French Revolution seemed to have utterly failed. In doing so, I seek to determine to what extent Beddoes was a radical, a revolutionary, and a fifth-column threat to the British, whether or not his ideology was in any regard the product of his science, and what the nature of his radicalism and the lineage of his ideas can tell us about the intellectual culture of his era. <br><br> I conclude that Beddoes fiery rhetoric belies an otherwise moderate and pacific approach to political change, based in British Enlightenment ideas rather than emerging science. The republic, rather than a goal to be achieved through violent overthrow, was simply the only logical organization for a society of innately equal citizens, a fact he believed obvious to the enlightened mind. He defended the French Revolution while he could still cast it as a moderate endeavor led by rational men, but, like so many of its early British supporters, grew disillusioned as France descended into mob violence and the tyranny of Robespierre. Following the Priestley Riots of 1791, he harboured deep fears of a sans-culotte-like British mob, which threatened not only the Church and King, but the interests and liberty of those men like Joseph Priestley and James Watt who were generating valuable knowledge and industry around him. <br><br> My analysis supports Roy Porters theory of a unique British Enlightenment, a social fermentation which emphasized Lockean personal liberty, improvement, and private property (which evolved into the laissez-faire economics of Adam Smith and David Hume), and which was, critically, defensive of liberties already gained. Beddoes constellation of political, religious, scientific, and economic influences reflect the characteristic Englishness of the enlightenment culture around him, distinct particularly from France, and helps illustrate the links between scientific and political ideas in the late Enlightenment.

The purpose of the author is to give a resume of Johnson's England and by examining The Rambler and Boswell's Life of Johnson, to determine what the Doctor thought concerning the prevailing conditions, social practices, and ideas of his time.

My dissertation argues that fiction produced in England during the frequent financial crises and political volatility experienced between 1770 and 1820 both reflected and shaped the cultural anxiety occasioned by a seemingly random and increasingly uncertain world. The project begins within the historical framework of the multiple financial crises that occurred in the late eighteenth century: seven crises took place between 1760 and 1797 alone, appearing seemingly out of nowhere and creating a climate of financial meltdown. But how did the awareness of economic turbulence filter into the creative consciousness? Through an interdisciplinary focus on cultural studies and behavioral economics, the dissertation posits that in spite of their conventional, status quo affirming endings (opportunists are punished, lovers are married), novels and plays written between 1770 and 1820 contemplated models of behavior that were newly opportunistic, echoing the reluctant realization that irrationality had become the norm rather than a rare aberration. By analyzing concrete narrative strategies used by writers such as Frances Burney, Georgiana Cavendish, Hannah Cowley, and Thomas Holcroft, I demonstrate that late eighteenth-century fiction both articulates and elides the awareness of randomness and uncertainty in its depiction of plot, character, and narrative.

The eighteenth century in England has long been associated with increasing consumption, trade, luxury, and intellectual exchange. In contrast with the religiously-fueled tumult of the previous century, it is frequently portrayed as a polite, enlightened and even secularising age. This thesis questions this picture. Taking the ambiguous legacies of the so-called "Toleration Act" of 1689 as its starting point, it explores the impact of the complex and uncertain outcomes of the 1689 Act on social relations between Protestant Dissenters and members of the Established Church in England in the first half of the eighteenth century. In connecting broader legislative change with developing social discourses and the practicalities of everyday life, it demonstrates the extent to which the Toleration Act made religious questions integral to the social and cultural development of the period. As a result, it stresses not only that developing modes and norms of sociability were essential to determining the nature of religious coexistence, but also that the changing religious landscape was absolutely integral to the evolution of multiple different social registers in eighteenth-century England. It therefore demonstrates how previously disparate approaches to eighteenth-century England are mutually illuminating, creating an account of the period that is better able to attend to both religious and cultural change. With this in mind this thesis pays particular attention to the language through which contemporaries described their sociability, suggesting that they have great potential to illuminate the nature of religious coexistence in this period. Starting from the premise that the words an individual chooses are in some way both reflective and constitutive of their ways of thinking, several of the chapters that follow draw on and analyse the language contemporaries employed at the intersections between religion and sociability. The thesis as a whole suggests that doing so can give us insight into how their religious lives were socially organised, how groups were formed, bounded, and transgressed, and how that in itself fed back into the structures of sociability.

This thesis investigates the economic accountability of women in eighteenth-century England, particularly within the informal credit market. In the past few decades, substantial scholarship has demonstrated women's regular involvement in active income generation. At all levels of the economy - from servants to investors - and stages of working life - from training to retirement - women have been shown to have engaged in a far more active manner than was previously appreciated. Older narratives of working opportunities being eroded by capitalism or the industrial revolution have been significantly challenged and the continuity of women's work largely demonstrated, with women whether single or married trading under their name, sometimes with phenomenal success. However, there have been no detailed examinations of how, or even if, women were held accountable when their business was not successful and failed. This thesis examines the extents to which women were held accountable for their own failures, asserting that, to understand female business in this period, it is not merely enough to prove its continued existence. The degree and extent of female business independence must also be determined. To achieve this it focusses on the often underappreciated role that debtors' prisons played in the eighteenth-century economy. Bankruptcy, traditionally the mechanism used to examine failure and insolvency, was artificially restricted during the period to those owing over £100 and who were defined as a 'trader' by a 1571 statute. Therefore principally only the wealthier merchants went bankrupt. Debtors' prisons were much less restrictive. Anyone owing over £2 could be imprisoned indefinitely under the common law on a pre-trial basis with little guarantee that trial would ever take place. However, debtors' prisons have received little scholarly attention due to untested assumptions about their lack of effectiveness. That which exists has focussed upon conditions or reform and has broadly ignored or denied the presence of women as prisoners. Due to the lack of existing knowledge about how prisons functioned, the thesis is split into complementary sections, first exploring the prisons themselves before turning to female prisoners within them. Part One reconfigures eighteenth-century debt imprisonment from a medieval hangover to a fundamental element of the credit market. It posits that, as contemporary sales credit was substantially based upon individual reputation rather than entirely upon financial reality, it was logical that prisons focussed on the confinement of the body behind reputation to enforce informal contracts. The first chapter illustrates the hypothesis fully, demonstrating the importance of debtors' prisons over bankruptcy and court process. It also examines the hierarchy of prisons. Superior court prisons like the King's Bench and the Fleet, catering generally for higher status prisoners, functioned as an obstacle to easy debt recovery by allowing debtors to live outside in relative liberty. Much of the existing scholarship has been skewed by focus on these prisons. The second chapter tests the hypothesis through a quantitative analysis of the surviving commitment registers of the Wood-Street Compter, later the Giltspur-Street Compter (1741-1815). Analysing commitment rates, monthly population estimates, release mechanisms, length of commitment, debt averages, as well as providing indicative data on debtor occupational structure the chapter demonstrates that prisons underlined the credit system by providing the trading classes with a speedy debt recovery mechanism. Chapter Three acts as a caveat to this evidence by demonstrating the fragility of the system of debt imprisonment and that simple reforms, intended to improve the rights of the debtor, undermined the purpose of debtors' prisons by diluting indefinite confinement. It focusses on the 1761 Compulsive Clause and the schedules of debtor estates produced out of it, as well as the qualitative change to imprisonment by the imposition of term limits on those owing less than £2 from 1786. Part Two uses the knowledge that debt imprisonment was an effective and normal facet of the credit market which processed both those who had temporarily found themselves unable to meet the demands of creditors and those whose economic ventures had failed absolutely. Chapter Four, acknowledging that the very existence of female prisoners for debt has been readily denied, investigates how the women within came to be confined through prison records along with memoirs and other personal documents relating to prisoners. It questions the absolute nature of coverture, demonstrating that some married women were confined for their debts, contrary to the letter of the law. It also argues that simply because the majority of female prisoners were either spinsters or widows, this did not mean their confinement was the result of anyone other than themselves. We should see female imprisonment as an action of their being held accountable. Finally, Chapter Five examines the quantitative reality of female debt imprisonment to measure accountability over time. It shows that the female experience was not substantially different from that of men within debtors' prisons, though some degree of separation appeared after 1780 particularly in the size of the debt for which they were committed. Finally, by combining the compter data on female percentages with that of other prisons in London with limited surviving material and with nationwide data drawn from the Insolvency Acts it is able to suggest the female accountability over the long eighteenth century. It posits that female accountability and therefore economic independence, declined across the period as the number of permanent spinsters and the age at first marriage fell. While it does not suggest that the rate of business run by women declined in this period, that more of them were covered by male ownership suggests a significant qualitative change in female business's societal place.

This thesis provides the first large-scale reintegration of anti-Methodism into the wider theological controversies of the eighteenth century. It argues that there was a close connection - and in many cases, a direct link - between anti-Methodist writers and those involved in other theological controversies. Moreover, it shows that anti-Methodist polemics interacted with and were informed by contemporary debates on such issues as Deism, miracles, and the afterlife. This study also explores authors who used anti-Methodism as a forum to voice heterodox views. The fact that these heterodox ideas were often disagreeable to both evangelicals and High Churchmen is significant because it suggests that - on various points of theology - John Wesley and George Whitefield differed little from their ‘orthodox' Anglican opponents. By highlighting these theological similarities between evangelicals and High Churchmen, this thesis challenges the traditional stereotype that the eighteenth-century Church of England had become indifferent to theology. Chapter One introduces Wesley and Whitefield's key Anglican opponents, and discusses the print culture of early anti-Methodist literature. Chapter Two locates the soteriological disputes between Methodist and anti-Methodist divines as part of a long-standing debate on faith and works, which can be traced back to earlier clashes between Reformed and Arminian divines during the Restoration period. Chapter Three analyses Methodist teachings on self-denial, and considers the ways in which anti-Methodist clergymen reconciled their attacks on evangelical asceticism with their seemingly contradictory charges of antinomianism. Chapter Four explores how anti-Methodism was used as a platform to voice heterodox views on original sin and the afterlife. Chapters Five and Six provide a fundamental reappraisal of the relationship (and perceived relationship) between evangelicalism and irreligion by showing that anti-Methodism overlapped with anti-Deism and the eighteenth-century miracles debate. The final chapter shows that anti-Methodist authors often adopted a decidedly partisan approach to historical writing, which was modelled on seventeenth-century polemical historiography.

This thesis examines perceptions of lower-class female prostitutes and prostitution in eighteenth-century London. It reveals that throughout the Hanoverian period perceptions of prostitution were shaped by sensibilities about morality, the social order, and sin. To explore attitudes towards prostitution in eighteenth-century London, this dissertation evaluates how governing elites, ecclesiastical authorities, contributors to the newspaper press, and popular commentators discussed prostitution. This dissertation engages with two main assumptions about prostitution in eighteenth-century London. First, it demonstrates that there is more continuity in perceptions of prostitution than historians have recognized; attitudes towards prostitutes did not shift from hostility to sympathy in a straight-forward manner. Second, this dissertation reveals that prostitution was regarded by Augustan and Hanoverian Londoners as a significant social problem because it embodied and encapsulated the seven deadly sins – lust, avarice, pride, envy, gluttony, sloth, and wrath. This thesis suggests that prostitutes’ excessive lust and avarice were not seen as disparate issues, but were often discussed together. Paradoxically, discussants recognized that financial considerations drove some women into prostitution, but these women were regarded as abnormally greedy and corrupt because they resorted to deceptive tactics. Pride and envy were associated with prostitution because Hanoverians believed some prostitutes bought extravagant clothes and cosmetics to conceal their lowly status and enhance their appearance to emulate elites. Hanoverians regarded these prostitutes with trepidation because they threatened to undermine their hierarchically ordered society. Prostitutes’ proclivities towards drunkenness and idleness were associated with gluttony and sloth. Commentators feared that drunken and idle prostitutes would encourage men to engage in these dissolute activities, leading to greater disorder. Wrath was closely associated with prostitution because of its association with violence. Although prostitutes were both the victims and perpetrators of assault, incidents in which prostitutes were assailants were reported more frequently, suggesting that Britons regarded prostitutes as disorderly, sinful criminals. Each chapter also brings attention to concerns regarding prostitutes’ lack of self-control and their apparent ability to cause men to lose self-control; how double standards of morality influenced discussions of prostitution; the consequences of prostitutes’ criminality and ability to deceive Londoners; and the various institutions, organizations, and suggestions proposed and established to reform prostitutes and eradicate sin from society.

Several theorists, including the Marxist theorists Trevor Ross, Walter Benjamin, and M.H. Abrams, have proposed theories to explain the eighteenth-century shift from functional to aesthetic conceptions of literature. Their explanations attribute the change to an increasingly consumer-based society (and the resulting commoditization of books), the development of the press, the rise of the middle class, and increased access to books. When we apply the cause-effect relationships which these theorists propose to the contexts of nineteenth-century America, Communist East Germany, WWII America, and 9/11 America, however, the causes don't correlate with the effects they theoretically predict. This disjunction suggests a re-examination of these three theories and possibly the Marxist basis which they share. I suggest that by triangulating rhetorical theory with Marxist theory we will gain a more comprehensive understanding of society's valuation of literature.